[Dungeon Overlord] Girls of the Dungeon

Girl Gamers, Geek Girls, what have you, we’re here and we play hard, just like the rest of you. We’re not all farmville clicking, bejewelled playing sweethearts either, some of us are masters of the rpg and fps games and some of us live for the mmo.

If you listen to statistics, you’ll find that the ESA puts women gamers at 47% of all gamers, popcap games puts women at 55% of all social gamers, and Anita Sarkeesian puts us at 42% of all online gamers. So, we play games at home, online, and socially. Check. We also make up 46% of all game purchases.

So why are women so reluctant to come forward? We don’t have the chronic fanboyism inherent in a lot of videogaming, (the term itself speaks volumes) Who stood up for Ms Sarkeesian in her women vs tropes kickstarter campaign? Who’s even donating to it? Why are people more interested in bashing Felicia Day for making the “would you like to date my avatar” than in applauding her efforts to make gaming more mainstream? For males AND females? And why do all the good games still have the women scantily clad and wearing armour that does nothing to protect their vital parts? Give me the armour of Master Chief please, you can wear the thigh highs, short skirt and leather bra. (I’m actually looking forward to Assassin’s Creed 4, so I can play a kick ass female character that is actually appropriately dressed for the part she plays)

Is this a political rant? Not really, it’s just that I’m a girl gamer and play this game with all of you, but I have yet to find all the other girl gamers that these statistics say are there? Are we all really playing farmville? This is a very social game, especially because of the chat feature! I rarely see girls out there on chat and only have a few known to me in my alliance and one other. So, where are you?

Girls of the Dungeon chime in. Why do you like this game, what is it about being the bad guy that is so much more fun than playing scrabulous or killing things in COD, or putting a pink cow in your farm in farmville? I know MOST female gamers prefer more casual games, and MOST female gamers on average only spend 7 hours a week gaming… but SOME of us are here… and are anything but casual about it.

I think the Dungeon Girls are special. To prove it, chime in with me here and tell me about your favourite games of all time.

Me? I like Portal, Civilization, Zelda, Pitfall, one I can’t remember the name of but was in an insane asylum and a maze to escape it, Doom (OMG I LOVEDTHISGAME), Duke Nukem, Final Fantasy, Left for Dead, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, CODWOW Zombies, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed, Borderlands, Sly Cooper, and cannot wait for Farcry3 to come out. Oh yeah.. I do like me some bejewelled and bubble witch saga for my down time…. I’m such a girl!

I have had dirty pics sent to my inbox yes, I have had people tell me to go back to the kitchen, yes, I have had people try to cyber with me, and people try to tell me I’m really a guy. I know a lot of us have had this happen, but if we really do hold such a large segment of the gaming population, I think we should say hi to each other and network. For one, I’d be more than happy to join in on any bashing of guys who treat them like that, one of us is bound to have a bigger army than the next!

I have had dirty pics sent to my inbox yes, I have had people tell me to go back to the kitchen, yes, I have had people try to cyber with me, and people try to tell me I’m really a guy. I know a lot of us have had this happen, but if we really do hold such a large segment of the gaming population, I think we should say hi to each other and network. For one, I’d be more than happy to join in on any bashing of guys who treat them like that, one of us is bound to have a bigger army than the next!

Really? O_o

And “go back to the kitchen” doesn’t fit in the modern world anymore. lol

You forgot Warcraft III, eve online, Mu and Black Hawk Down. I’m not a butch bird. I work, have kids, friends and hobbies and even get out of the house once in a while. I’m not allowed to play online with my sons friends any more since the head shot incident, but…. oh well.

The industry needs to catch up. Female gamers spend plenty of money on games, but everything is aimed at the guys. It’s about time they took us more seriously I say. Where are the half naked male avatars for us to ogle??

I’m just not very vocal in general chats & forums. I’m very bad that way, I also don’t FB, Tweet, or MI; I barely do my email.

I’m an old gamer (I remember when Stratego was the new rage!) and have had fun watching computer and gaming in general grow & change (Unicorn’s Lady is my old BBS handle). Since I was one of the first early women gamers in Metro Denver, I had to handle being in a “Man’s World” most of my adult life. The babe in the chainmail bikini started way back with tabletop roleplaying games and it was wonderful to at least finally have some kind of female miniature (that wasn’t a slave girl) even if you did wonder how she didn’t catch a cold. At least some of the computer games now let us size our breasts a bit to a more realistic size.

If we want changes, we need to continue to be vocal on what we want. We also need to get more women into the industry. Instead of “Women’s” type of professions, we need women programmers & designers. (Yes, I know we have some, but it is still mainly a “Man’s” occupation) The game industry is changing, but it is a slow process. We also need to be proud that we play more than just Bejewelled or Farmville, talk with other people how much you enjoyed last weekend’s raid or how you got high kill score for the day. Volunteer for beta tests. Sign your name to the game warranty cards instead of your male family members. Don’t give up, it just takes time.

Personally I want it all! I want the chainmail bikini for the days I want to be a sexpot and I want sensible armor for the days I don’t want to flirt (and I want to be able to dye it because I don’t like pink or pastels). I want to be able to adjust my character’s look so she or he is drop dead gorious or make them old or fat or thin or a child or a creature, depending how I wish to roleplay the character. I don’t just want to kill something, I wish to have a place to live in with furniture and trophies & to be able to create things that are wanted (this game hits these buttons fairly well with the dungeons & having to build/upgrade rooms). I want to be able to sell my wares to other players, chat with them, leave msgs for them, send deliveries to them. I want great gameplay with a sense of humor, to be able to flag myselt no-PvP, sandbox, but with quests also, and great graphics. I want to be able to solo and group and be in a guild. AND! all at a reasonable price. Grin! I know I want a lot, but who knows maybe someday it will all be in a game that catches my fancy.

Hmmm…why am I playing DO? Well it looked somewhat like Dungeon Keeper and it plays somewhat like Travian. So Dungeon Overlord must be their secret love child! ;)

I’ve classified myself as a gamer since 1983, when I braved the all-male domain of the junior high school D&D club. It took me a long time to become comfortable with the term girl gamer — after all, that’s what you called the girlfriends that showed up occasionally but weren’t really interested in playing. I was one of the guys, gamer subtype, and wanted to be taken seriously as such.
I’ve been using MsMayhem as my online name nearly as long. For a while I was just Mayhem when the cyber idiots decided that a female online name must mean I have a receptive in-box (you can see that as a pun or not, as you so choose). I’ve skewed the demographics for game stores. I’ve walked out of a game club full of guys that didn’t speak a word to me when I showed up as a new member. And always, online or off or both, I’ve found ways to game.
Flash forward about 25 years and I started to figure out “girl” and “gamer” weren’t so mutually exclusive (long story). Now I’m proud of both aspects of my character, and delight in introducing more people to gaming. My sweetie is also a gamer, and has mentioned how happy he is that his mate understands “in the middle of a fight” as an acceptable excuse for not immediately responding to whatever request.
My favorite games: Japanese RPGs, RPGs like Skyrim and Mass Effect, Sims, time and resource management games, pen-and-paper RPGs. I like making characters I can identify with somehow, or can become invested in. I do not usually like FPS or platformers unless they have a strong story/character element.
Why do I play DO? I like time and resource management games and I like fantasy games. Adding the PVP element seemed interesting. I’m enjoying it so far.

Girl Gamers, Geek Girls, what have you, we’re here and we play hard, just like the rest of you. We’re not all farmville clicking, bejewelled playing sweethearts either, some of us are masters of the rpg and fps games and some of us live for the mmo.

If you listen to statistics, you’ll find that the ESA puts women gamers at 47% of all gamers, popcap games puts women at 55% of all social gamers, and Anita Sarkeesian puts us at 42% of all online gamers. So, we play games at home, online, and socially. Check. We also make up 46% of all game purchases.

So why are women so reluctant to come forward? We don’t have the chronic fanboyism inherent in a lot of videogaming, (the term itself speaks volumes) Who stood up for Ms Sarkeesian in her women vs tropes kickstarter campaign? Who’s even donating to it? Why are people more interested in bashing Felicia Day for making the “would you like to date my avatar” than in applauding her efforts to make gaming more mainstream? For males AND females? And why do all the good games still have the women scantily clad and wearing armour that does nothing to protect their vital parts? Give me the armour of Master Chief please, you can wear the thigh highs, short skirt and leather bra. (I’m actually looking forward to Assassin’s Creed 4, so I can play a kick ass female character that is actually appropriately dressed for the part she plays)

Is this a political rant? Not really, it’s just that I’m a girl gamer and play this game with all of you, but I have yet to find all the other girl gamers that these statistics say are there? Are we all really playing farmville? This is a very social game, especially because of the chat feature! I rarely see girls out there on chat and only have a few known to me in my alliance and one other. So, where are you?

Girls of the Dungeon chime in. Why do you like this game, what is it about being the bad guy that is so much more fun than playing scrabulous or killing things in COD, or putting a pink cow in your farm in farmville? I know MOST female gamers prefer more casual games, and MOST female gamers on average only spend 7 hours a week gaming… but SOME of us are here… and are anything but casual about it.

I think the Dungeon Girls are special. To prove it, chime in with me here and tell me about your favourite games of all time.

Me? I like Portal, Civilization, Zelda, Pitfall, one I can’t remember the name of but was in an insane asylum and a maze to escape it, Doom (OMG I LOVEDTHISGAME), Duke Nukem, Final Fantasy, Left for Dead, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, CODWOW Zombies, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed, Borderlands, Sly Cooper, and cannot wait for Farcry3 to come out. Oh yeah.. I do like me some bejewelled and bubble witch saga for my down time…. I’m such a girl!

the fact that you try and make a forum on this game, just like when we have enough trouble with a propogandist around here, is pathetic. do it on a regular Kongregate ‘Anything’ forum instead of wasting space here.

I for one appauld you, for what you say is totally true. Many a Gamer Girl have kept that part of them secret i expect (for I can not know, I am a man, and have never met one to ever ask such a question) but the problem you all have is that secrecy itself, just as you pointed out. I know many casual gaming women, but such women whom you talk about either are to afraid for one reason or another to claim their title, or just wish to quietly giggle and chuckle and whatever else you women do whilst you play hardcore games. Whats ironic is the gaming industries total disregard (ok not total, but pretty close) for the women whom actually don’t just sit around growing, but are dismembering, destroying, creating, and so forth. But there is good news: many new mainstream titles are incorperating a character twist in which the protaganist is a women, not a man, Dead Space, even old Metorid, The Elder Scrolls, and more are sure to come. What I see is the industries problem is creating a woman who is idetifiable to both men and women, and with that that they also fit the story they take place in.

But never doubt, for when there is a will, there is always a will, and time is on your side.

i don’t really agree with much that you said. i didnt chime in before because its your thread. but it irritates me when people embrace this mainstream perspective wholeheartedly and just agree to what i find to be questionable attitudes about just how horrible it is to be a girl gamer. i apologize in advance for derailing your thread somewhat.

about 1/2 my friends on kong are women. before kong the online guilds i was in all had plenty of women – the stable ones of course. (though i wouldnt say up to 50% in the past) even before i reached my teenage years, the offline gamers i came into contact with, did not illustrate any gender divide.

sure, in gaming, if you acknowledge your gender out of the blue you face harassment by tons of adolescent males. but its the same with if you suddenly highlight Anything at all. legions of idiots can gather to drool and agitate over just about anything under the sun.

i’ve always felt that its more of a problem with how we educate adolescent males in particular (as opposed to both men and women), to indulge in brash, boastful, idiotic, offensive, pointless, anti-social behavior. and to indulge in such especially when there are no practical consequences. (relevant because people are relatively shielded from identification on the internet) socializing them (males) as a collective, to only respond to brute force and the lowest common denominator is what i see as the real problem here. this is significant because i see most of the female harassment done by this group of people (adolescent males).

i will grant you the point about how gaming developers dont cater properly to its female audience as being completely legitimate however.

Boom, if it was just adolescent males I’d agree completely, but it’s not, sometimes it’s fully grown adults older than me. There are some people that want gaming to be their “safe space” away from women. an attitude I do not understand at all, but some people are stupid, and some of them are otherwise functional adults.

Kaboomba, I’m not sure what I said that you disagree with, I simply stated a few statistics in hopes to bring a couple of my fellow female gamers forward. If you believe the statistics, there’s a lot of us, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of them in this game, so I’m just hoping to find a few more of them so that I can give them all a high five. I will say one thing though, it’s the adult males I’ve had issues with, not the adolescents.

As to this not belonging in this forum?? I play this game, this is my community, so I can try to build it any way I want. If the NOG team feels it doesn’t belong here, they’re free to delete it!

never said anything approaching ‘not belonging in this forum’, not even close. i suspect you are responding to someone else, some other argument in some political sphere far removed from here.

to be clearer, i think that the ‘girl gamer’ trope is a mass media creation which doesn’t exist. and willingness to see persecution which by and large doesn’t exist, militancy regarding ‘unwillingness to speak up’ or ‘unwillingness to embrace’ a stereotype as part your identity is nonsensical.

when you are outed as a woman on the internet, not only are you automatically lumped into the ‘sexual harassment target’ category, you’re also lumped into the ‘lets celebrate our femalehood’ category. and thats bullshit.

its absolutely fine for you to look for more female gamers to form a group. the part i find annoying is when people put anything celebrating female identity on a pedestal as admirable, crusading, brave, etc. its actually just a normal thing to do.

Coming from a more liberal point of view (canada), i disagree with you. Women use to be considered outsiders in the gaming world and they somewhat still are today. I remember there’s a site (forgot what it was) that has recordings and quotes of adults harassing female gamers (including death threats, threats of rape) over voice chat like on xbox. Some of the stuff is pretty grim, not sure if they are just raging with their ego hurt though. lol!

If it’s so annoying to you why even bother joining in? Just ignore this thread and move on with your life. :P

Kaboomba – and there you have it, a perfect example of the misogynistic attitudes that makes players like me lurk instead of actively converse with many other players… Personally I hadn’t had too many issues except just yesterday I was told here on Kong 1) that I’m male, and 2) that females don’t play games, and don’t use the internet.

I’m a long time gamer and my husband and I play a lot of games. Oh, and he does all the cooking…

Kong seems to attract the worst of folk, the least mature. I don’t recall much harassment going on when I played Evony, and it seemed at the minimum 40% were female.
As for gaming in general, if you discount EA (a pisspoor company that dominates), women tend to hold a fairly large section of the jobs, many even being the team leaders. I’ve been a subscriber for many many years now to the industry magazines (I am/was a developer myself), so I can say this for certain. Sure sexy chainmail is heavily featured due to it’s sell-ability, but the decision to include it in the game was most likely made by a woman.

Actually I never was a gamer of any sort. Basically DO is the first time I ever played something more complex than Bubble Witch Saga… and it’s fun. It also takes a lot of time, so with work and kids and everything I drop out of sight for a while, just tending my dungeons quietly, and then pop up again.

In general, I see a harder and harsher divide between the sexes now than in the 80s, when I was a kid. Everything is bloody genderized, and though I don’t mind my daughters having their pinks and glittery stuff, why the f*** does eveything have to be either Barbie or He-Man? I see less of the nerd girls now, fewer boys playing with a doll house, there’s a weird sort of backlash that makes me think we are in for worse and more old-fashioned times. Which sucks big time.

Anyhow, it’s often the men and boys who claim there’s no sexism. It’s like me whiteskin telling some POC there’s no racism out there. Shouldn’t we go talk to the people affected by it? I personally don’t get troubled by it much, I can be very forceful and I am in a position where I don’t have to take every sort of shit.

As far as DO goes, my username invites comment, and I like to play along. Why not? Someone using it as a bad comeon will soon know what to expect. If some juvenile delinquent with little command of written language starts making an ass out of himself, I am happy to help him along.

Brandobarus, you must have been on a very different Evony server than I was on. I started out with the name Sheldor, but won a name changer and my alliance voted to have me change it to Naughty. You can be sure, that I got tons of pinks from people asking “wanna cyber” and pics of genitalia linked to me, to the point that I never open a link from someone that someone else doesn’t vet first anymore. Couple that with a chat that wasn’t moderated at all, and you would get some people coming in from the advertising campaign expecting it to be a hardcore hookup site. (and for some, it was if stories are to be believed)

Milly, I’ve gotten the, you’re a guy thing hundreds of times. I’ve also gotten, you’re fat, you’re ugly and you have no life, because we all know that’s what gamers are, right? Girl gamers must be more so.

Domina, I’ve talked to girls with lots of names that invite comment. My guild choosing naughty for me was more because I was always causing disturbances, but people are free to come to their own conclusions, I can just imagine what they expect from you. In fact, the name of the thread, when we had it on the NOG forums, brought in a ton of guys complaining, hey… what?? This isn’t what I expected in here!

And it does belong here, this is where we’re playing together. I can tell you that yes, in other games I’ve played, I’ve met a lot more females. I don’t know why that’s not the case in this one. I know we’re here, the statistics I illustrated show that we have to be. But in THIS game… I’m not finding you, and I want to know why. There’s a few who have posted here who I already knew, but what about the rest of us? Can we really say there’s less here? If so, why? And for those of us who are here, what is it about this game that keeps you here?

For me, I really enjoy the social aspect of it, the politics and dramas of the various groups. I like the infrastructure involved in successful partnering with others, and hey, I just like to get to talk to people from all over. I’ve met players from around the world in games like this. Many of them in real life, including my husband. There’s a ton more I’d like to meet as well, so I’d have to say social first. But this isn’t the only social group out there, so what else about it attracts me? The sheer complexity, and ability to completely forge your own unique path in the game, there is no: this is the best way. There are SOME best ways, but there is just far too much complexity to say that any given answer is correct for any given situation. What’s the best dungeon? Depends on your game play. What’s the best troops? Depends on your game play. What’s the best strategy? Your own game play and that of other’s around you dictate that and it’s constantly in flux.

Do guys like the game for the same reason? Of course! So why am I looking for the women? Because they don’t seem to be there in numbers that statistics would suggest we are. and that too, intrigues me, if it’s true.

You had me not caring particularly much up until the assassins creed 4 bit.

Being a huge fan of the series, i have the simplest question to ask…where the heck did you get assassins creed 4 starring a female character from? we only JUST got assassins creed 3, i highly doubt any reputable source would lock in a new character for a game that dosent even have any details around it yet.

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